For his third show with the gallery, Franck Kemkeng Noah will present a series of new works investigating the cross-cultural meeting ground of the invisible world, that of ancestral spirits, beliefs, and energies, as expressed by artistic traditions and ritual objects.
Deeply rooted into the heritage of the Bamileke people of Cameroon, of which he is a prince, Kemkeng Noah's work comments on the eternal journey between north and south, freely borrowing from the myths and cosmogonies of Western and Central African animism which he transposes into the black and white structures of architectural spaces pertaining to European, Asian, and American heritage, thus generating hypothetical and symbolic gatherings of mind and soul.
The Offscreen Series is a personalized homage to the influences traditional African arts have had on European Modern Masters and their work. Inside these seemingly endless framed representations of works by Picasso, Miró, or Basquiat, the Cameroonian artist paints some of his own previous works, populated by a myriad of people from Central and West Africa and their masquerades.
There is undoubtedly a playful dialogue taking place in these new works on canvas and discarded carpets, as suggested by these represented meta-accumulations questioning the very essence of Art (as curated by the artist). What makes a work of art? Is it the form, its content, or what lies beyond the latter, far into the invisible expressions of our own humanity?
Symbols, codes, and languages invade the compositions of Franck Kemkeng Noah like so many reminders of the ways our societies still distinguish themselves from one another. This geometric tension which is undeniably present on picture suggests that whatever our common heritage and concerns might be, we still must learn a lot about each other to find balance.
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